Small town folks generally are a friendly bunch. I’ve lived in small places and in big places. I’ve found that the level of friendliness is in inverse proportion to the population. The general rule is the smaller the population, the greater the friendliness; the bigger the population, the less the friendliness. There may be exceptions, but not many.
I’ve watched people in small towns greet a stranger with a hearty hello, shake hands, and spend ten minutes getting to know one another. It is considered rude in small towns to rush away from another person, as if there is something more important that needs attended to. In small towns, if you accidentally back into a person at the post office, you probably end up knowing the names of each other’s children as well as how old the dog or cat is back at the house.
The opposite has been my experience in big cities. There is no eye contact, no hellos, and no conversation. It is as if the other person is a carrier for the Ebola virus and any contact with that person on the concrete will result in personal calamity. Should you rub shoulders with a stranger on a city sidewalk, there is a scowl or silence cast your way. The person makes it clear a wrong has been done to him or her.
In West Texas, where small towns are as common as droughts and dogs, you learn the social etiquette quickly or you’re considered quirky. Big city ways do not fly in rural Texas where most towns have one water tower, one stop light and one or two kooks. Here, people know each other, know about one another, or want to know more about you. Greetings are the gateway to gathering that knowledge.
It takes some getting used to–if you’re from someplace else–but these greetings are not reserved to face-to-face encounters on the parking lot of Dollar General or at the counter of the Dairy Queen. A greeting is exchanged even in vehicles as you meet an ongoing car on any two lane road. Generally, the greeting is simple. You lift the fingers on your right hand from their grip on the steering wheel and you extend a single wave to the person behind the wheel of the other vehicle. They do the same thing. Since you can’t say hello with your mouths, you say hello with your hands. It works quite well really.
Again, if you fail to follow the formula, you’re going to be frowned upon or thought mighty unfriendly. Granted, if you’ve moved from somewhere bigger, this is going to take some practice. There is an awkward stage where you don’t want to do it, followed by a transitional stage of where you don’t want to do it wrong, ending with the stage of where you don’t want to forget to do it. That is, unless you’re determined to keep big city ways, even though the closest city is two hundred miles to the East.
As a boy growing up in small-town West Texas, I was taught the ways of greeting people the same way I was taught to drive a stick shift or to kill a rattlesnake. All were considered equally important. I remember how people personalized those car-to-car exchanges, expanding beyond the slight tilt of the right hand to lifting both left and right hands up, to raising an entire arm in the air as someone was met on the road. If your window was rolled down–and it was in the summer because the only air-conditioning was the air outside–then you could extend your arm outside the window–if it wasn’t already there–and lift it or your left hand in a salutation of some sort.
My all-time favorite was the guy who personalized his hand greeting so much so that you didn’t need to recognize his vehicle to know who was behind the wheel. When you met him on the road, he’d lift his right hand and move it from the left side of the windshield all the way to the right side in one extended and fluid motion. Seeing the way he did it made you smile. I still do when I think about him. That was one guy who considered it serious business to say hello, even from the inside of his pick-up truck.
Times change. We all know they do. There aren’t any beauty shops left much less barber shops and home-cooked meals come from the frozen food counter at Walmart and going to church on Sunday is no sure thing. Yes, even in the small towns where change comes slower and where old ways hang on like a tick to a dog. So nowadays it is more often than not the old-timers who still take time to say hello on the street or wave from the inside of their truck as you meet each other on the road.
The younger generation isn’t schooled in the same way of speaking to another person or showing courtesy or offering a salutation. Instead, greetings are done by way of Snap Chat or Instagram or Twitter. The argument could be made that social media gets the job done. The question unanswered is how social it really is.
A couple years ago I was driving in a car in the middle of nowhere–which is the way most people describe most of West Texas–when I struck a small piece of metal that was laying in the highway, some sharp piece off the tire rim of an 18 wheeler. It punctured my left front tire on impact and within seconds the tire was flat. I pulled off the road, not sure if I had the means or know-how to remove the ruined tire and replace it with the donut (no more spare tires these days either) stored underneath the car. Things weren’t looking up and evening was coming up.
Within a few minutes a pick up truck passed by. And within a few seconds more it made an U-turn and pulled behind my car. A man got out, a smile on his face, and a big “Howdy” out of his mouth, followed by “You need some help with that tire?” He made it clear it was no bother and his plans for the evening could wait. He told me he had changed lots of flats and assured me it wouldn’t take but a few minutes to get me back on the road.
He was the typical small-town Texan–work clothes on his back, dirt on his hands, and friendliness in his voice. I was a stranger, but he treated me like a friend. I think of him often. I try to be like him on good days. I wish we all lived in a place where people still greeted each other that way.
Different places have different ways of extending a greeting. Our “hello” wasn’t used widely until the invention of the telephone and the word “hello” was decided as the right way to answer the phone. I’m not sure what the greeting was before then. I’ve heard there is an African tribe that greets others with the question, “How are the children?” Still another group somewhere greets another person with the question, “Have you eaten today?”
I’d like to think that all greetings–however expressed–are important. We acknowledge one another when we greet each other. We show respect to the other person standing before us when we greet him or her. Our greeting is a reminder that we belong together, that our survival depends on our helping each other, and that our days are made better with a smile and a “Howdy.”
When the Galilean preacher with a heart of gold was put to death because of his friendliness to outsiders, he returned from the grave to greet his followers one final time. And as he stood before them with the scars still on his hands, he greeted them with these words, “Peace be with you.” We are told that his followers heard the greeting and were “incredulous with joy,” which I take to mean they answered him back, “Hell yeah!”
Perhaps, then, each time we greet one another, we might strive for the same message of peace, and hope for the same response of joy from those who receive our howdy do.
— Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 